Ayn Rand and traditional roles

[KacyRay]

What do you suppose Ms. Rand would've thought about these comments by Gabrielle Reece?

Did she ever express any thoughts on traditional roles? Does any Objectivist literature speak to the issue?

[Dglgmut]

I think Rand spoke to this in her novels through illustration. Though she questioned the validity of evolution, evolution is definitely the reason for this dynamic. Women are predisposed to choosing men based on the traits most viable for surviving in tribal groups. As society has advanced, they look for derivatives of these traits (muscle mass, for example, is not as important), though the actual role of men has changed drastically over the last hundred years or so. Social status--respect from other men--is probably the most important (think of how much more protection the First Lady has, or the wife of a mafia boss, compared to most wives).

Also, "objectification" is a term used to degrade male sexuality. When women lust for men, we don't often think "objectification".

Here's a book you might find interesting that talks specifically about the male's role in the relationship with women as well as society (while the females is more obvious, for which females generally control the population of any sexual species).

http://www.amazon.com/The-Way-Men-Jack-Donovan/dp/0985452307/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1366561341&sr=8-1&keywords=way+of+men

And here's a video with the OL approved Bill Whittle, as well as a less-than-formal critique of traditional gender roles from an anti-feminist perspective:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D3Wy5KQHx3g

[Reidy]

Rand's characterization of Dagny Taggart or Kira Argunova or, for that matter, Rand's own life, would be her best statements on traditional roles. The Playboy interview touches on the topic, saying just what you'd expect if you're familiar with the former sources.

She'd agree with some of what Reece says, but she'd limit this to expressly sexual roles and would not consider this good advice for career or family life. At times Reece verges on saying that the appropriate attitude for a woman is a kind of altruistic blackmail: I gave up my independence for you, now you can make some sacrifices for me. You can easily figure what Rand would say about that.

[Dglgmut]

Rand's characterization of Dagny Taggart or Kira Argunova or, for that matter, Rand's own life, would be her best statements on traditional roles. The Playboy interview touches on the topic, saying just what you'd expect if you're familiar with the former sources.

She'd agree with some of what Reece says, but she'd limit this to expressly sexual roles and would not consider this good advice for career or family life. At times Reece verges on saying that the appropriate attitude for a woman is a kind of altruistic blackmail: I gave up my independence for you, now you can make some sacrifices for me. You can easily figure what Rand would say about that.

Well, the submissiveness that Reece spoke of can be organic or put-on. If it's real, and the woman believes the man is actually that great, then there's no problem. If she is doing him a favor (and perhaps attempting to trick herself) by pretending she thinks he's great, that's different.

[studiodekadent]

Rand was rather inconsistent on traditional gender roles, but overall her philosophy seems to inevitably reject the idea they are morally normative. Gender roles are based on gender essentialism, which is predicated on epistemological essentialism, which Rand opposed. If someone wants to accept traditional gender roles that is fine, but that's another question.

Not only that but she said in her Playboy interview pretty consistently that what is good for a man is good for a woman, and women should have career aspirations and the like. She clearly considered family a choice, not a duty.

She didn't abide by traditional femininity either, but this is where her inconsistency arises. Rand grew up in a cultural context which saw intelligence as "masculine," and she more or less defined herself by her intellect (Barbara Branden's book goes into the subject and points out how the only approval Rand got as a child was due to her intellect). So she was forced into a pretty nasty position where she had to choose between her source of self-esteem/identity/pride and her gender identity (which was often questioned because she was smart, which socially defeminized her).

As I see it, her fetish for ravishment sex and that kind of thing was an attempt for her to balance the two needs out. She wanted to feel properly feminine, yet on the other hand she wanted to retain her pride and self-worth and dignity as an intelligent person.

The solution? Red-Sonja-style 'rape' fantasies! She gets to be an awesome worthy badass brainiac AND get ravished like a "proper" woman. And even better, the REASON she gets ravished like a "proper" woman is BECAUSE she was an awesome worthy badass brainiac (thus turning being ravished into a validation of her self-worth). That's a win-win on her part.

I mean, whilst I broadly agree with the idea that one's choice in bedmate/s should reflect one's values in some way, Rand's whole "noble hunter seeks worthy quarry" thing is pretty obviously her own sexual psychology with philosophical justifications grafted onto it.

And she's entitled to her sexual psychology. Where she really went wrong was in trying to make her kinks morally normative.

Anyway, Rand's entire thought complex on sex and gender needs to be understood in the context of a gender-atypical cisgender woman trying to validate both her femininity and the moral worthiness of her gender-atypical virtues.

Some people have raised the possibility that Rand wasn't cisgender... Chris Sciabarra once speculated (just speculated, mind you) that Rand may have been a gay man trapped in a woman's body. It is an interesting hypothesis, but I'm inclined to disagree with that, because Rand clearly had an extremely strong attachment to her femaleness (and a desire to have her femininity validated). So it seems that Rand was suffering the Nerd Chick's Dilemma - smart women feel socially defeminized.

Interestingly enough, male Objectivists are typically male nerds, and since the culturally normative ideal of masculinity is based principally in physical strength (and historically has always been - of course Aristotle would argue that the best thing that someone can be is a philosopher but that was just his vanity and not a reflection of mainstream Greek society), male Objectivists often experience something similar. I'm convinced one of the reasons for Objectivism's appeal to nerdy guys is because Objectivism is very gender-validating for men that feel they don't "measure up" to traditional standards of machoness.

Digression - nerdy guys are socially emasculated, nerdy chicks are socially defeminized (to at least some degree, although it varies since feminism has made it a lot less acceptable to gender-police women but nothing comparable has happened for men). Traditional machoness is all preposterone-muscles-and-SMASH-AND-KILL and traditional femininity is all "Logic don't real, only feels!!!" So both men and women with rational, Apollonian temperments end up as being seen as not-real-men/women. Perhaps "people of the mind" are the third gender.

But yeah, digression over. As I see it, Rand was not a gender conservative at all. She was actually trying to claim a socially-accepted-as-feminine identity whilst rejecting all the basic demands which that identity made on women. The ravishment kink was just her means of doing it.

[caroljane]

SDK, this is an excellent analysis. I would add that Rand also seemed to have great contempt for women who chose the sole role of wife/mother, rendering them as leeches, mindless altruists or deluded idealists like Lilian, the Tunnel Mother and Cheryl.

[studiodekadent]

SDK, this is an excellent analysis.

Thank you!

[Reidy]

Odd choice of examples in #6. Lillian has no children. Cheryl is to young to have made up her mind, but she's very ambitious when we meet her and would probably have become a career woman, children or not. The tunnel mother gets a very sympathetic treatment from Rand.

[caroljane]

Odd choice of examples in #6. Lillian has no children. Cheryl is to young to have made up her mind, but she's very ambitious when we meet her and would probably have become a career woman, children or not. The tunnel mother gets a very sympathetic treatment from Rand.

Sorry, I should have said wife OR wife/mother. My recollection of the tunnel scene is, I felt Rand was expressing contempt for the mother for prioritizing the children. I got no impression of sympathetic treatment.

[Mike V]

Also, "objectification" is a term used to degrade male sexuality. When women lust for men, we don't often think "objectification".

Depends on what you mean by "objectification." There are generally two ways it is used. One is referring to someone being an object of sexual gratification. There's nothing wrong with this, and, as you said, men and women both do this in terms of sex and sexual attraction. Of course you're attracted to her legs, butt, boobs, whatever. And of course she's attracted to your body, face, penis, butt, whatever. And both can enjoy that, no problem. Anyone who says there is something wrong with that is nuts.

But there's another sense in which women can and have been objectified, and it may not have anything to do with sex. In many cultures, women have been viewed as possessions, prizes, or otherwise property of men, their husbands, or future husbands. Anytime a woman is treated as an object in this way -- a possession instead of a person -- then it's a problem. And yes -- it's sexist.

By the way, it also is the chief reason why men strike out with women and are unable to be attractive to many women. When a guy communicates with a woman as though she's a prize to be won, then in the process of that objectification he also subconsciously communicates that he is of less value than she is, and vice versa, that she is of more value than he is. And contrary to opinion, women may enjoy the perks of having a male fawn over her and make attempts at impressing her and "winning the prize" (she might get free dinner and drinks), but she definitely won't be sexually attracted to that kind of guy. A woman is much more likely to be attracted to a guy who consistently treats her as a person, not higher or lower than he is as a human being, and who doesn't "objectify" her by treating her like a prize he hopes to be worthy of.

I think a lot of people miss that in discussions like these.

So to recap: The same word "objectification" is usually used in two different concepts -- one of those concepts is good, one is bad.

[Mike V]

SDK, I agree with Daunce. Great post. I had concluded much the same already, but you explained the possible psychology well, and added a lot of things I didn't know. Thanks!

[studiodekadent]

Also, "objectification" is a term used to degrade male sexuality. When women lust for men, we don't often think "objectification".

Depends on what you mean by "objectification." There are generally two ways it is used. One is referring to someone being an object of sexual gratification. There's nothing wrong with this, and, as you said, men and women both do this in terms of sex and sexual attraction. Of course you're attracted to her legs, butt, boobs, whatever. And of course she's attracted to your body, face, penis, butt, whatever. And both can enjoy that, no problem. Anyone who says there is something wrong with that is nuts.

But there's another sense in which women can and have been objectified, and it may not have anything to do with sex. In many cultures, women have been viewed as possessions, prizes, or otherwise property of men, their husbands, or future husbands. Anytime a woman is treated as an object in this way -- a possession instead of a person -- then it's a problem. And yes -- it's sexist.

By the way, it also is the chief reason why men strike out with women and are unable to be attractive to many women. When a guy communicates with a woman as though she's a prize to be won, then in the process of that objectification he also subconsciously communicates that he is of less value than she is, and vice versa, that she is of more value than he is. And contrary to opinion, women may enjoy the perks of having a male fawn over her and make attempts at impressing her and "winning the prize" (she might get free dinner and drinks), but she definitely won't be sexually attracted to that kind of guy. A woman is much more likely to be attracted to a guy who consistently treats her as a person, not higher or lower than he is as a human being, and who doesn't "objectify" her by treating her like a prize he hopes to be worthy of.

I think a lot of people miss that in discussions like these.

So to recap: The same word "objectification" is usually used in two different concepts -- one of those concepts is good, one is bad.

There's also a third meaning, although it is a similar concept.

"Objectify" is also used to describe seeing/treating someone as a means to an end rather than as an end in themselves (to use the Kantian phrase)... to treat them or present them as if their existence is only justified by service to some greater end. You could argue that this broader kind of objectification is essentially altruism as Rand understood it.

And under that standard, I think both traditional gender roles count as objectifying since both of them were based in making people serve the community's need for population growth (hence women must bear children, men must be protector/providers). They forced people to suppress individuality in the name of the group.

And Mike V, thank you for the feedback!

[tmj]

Are Howard, John etal to be defined as individuals differently, metaphysically , from Dominique and Dagny? Why and how?

[syrakusos]

SDK, this is an excellent analysis. I would add that Rand also seemed to have great contempt for women who chose the sole role of wife/mother, rendering them as leeches, mindless altruists or deluded idealists like Lilian, the Tunnel Mother and Cheryl.

Odd choice of examples in #6. Lillian has no children. Cheryl is to young to have made up her mind, but she's very ambitious when we meet her and would probably have become a career woman, children or not. The tunnel mother gets a very sympathetic treatment from Rand.

As I have read it over the years, first of all, Rand had no sympathy for the Mother in the Tunnel. Contrasting her, in the Valley we meet Kay Ludlow the actress who became Ragnar Danneskjold's wife, and the mother of his two sons. She still gives performances. And we can assume that she explicitly accepts all of the precepts and tenets of rational-empirical philosophy (within her range of understanding) because no collective agreements are allowed; husband and wife speak for themselves, not each other. She chooses to be a mother and seems to be doing quite well at it.

If Cheryl's imagined life had come to fruition, if James had been the man she thought he was, she might have raised his children and managed his home, but she would not have had any kind of working career. She would have been like Dagny's mother, not like Dagny. Cheryl would have worked hard at rising to the demands of being the wife of James Taggart, giving perfect parties, saying the right things, introducing the right people to each other. As a mother - as the mother of Taggart children - she probably would have relied on professional caregivers, nannies, au paires, boarding schools, etc., as that was the cultural context.

In an alternate story from "fan fic" Cheryl marries Eddie Willers, a better match for both of them. In such a context, as the kids grow up and go to school, as they become more self-reliant, she can and probably would find work outside the home.

As for the original question from KacyRay, as do others here, I agree with Studeodekadent's analysis. It pretty much sums up the point Rand was making. Therefore to answer tmj above, "No."

Statistics do not define individuals. It is true that most women are smaller than most men; and it is true that many women are larger than many men. That some particular woman is taller and heavier than some particular man has no objective importance.

For the word "objective" allow me to suggest "moral-metaphysical" which identifies the fact that for humans as volitional beings, that which is moral has metaphysical meaning; and metaphysical facts have moral consequences. It is another way to express the fact-value unity.

Ayn Rand did not develop a complete presentation on sex, gender, and sexuality. Intersecting that plane, she also did not delve into the psychology of admiration. Do women have an innate "urge" to become mothers? Some do not, of course. Whether a particular woman does or does not would have no moral-metaphysical value, any more than would any other physical attribute. So, too, with Dagny's "feminine" desire to be chained. Considering the male relationships - Francisco, Akston, Rearden, Danagger, and the others - to whom does John Galt look up? If he just glories in his own self-esteem, why does everyone not do that? Why do people "need" others to admire? Or do we? Rand said that a woman should not be President of the United States because she would have no one to look up to. That remains an unaddressed problem.